


For The Sake Of The Children

by FactorialRabbits



Series: OC studies [5]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: and please do check them, being motivated to be better by fear of death not being a good person, check top note for content warnings, not exactly fully researched and also written on my phone and minimally editted because sads, the awakening of men, the corruption of man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 15:45:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18236948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FactorialRabbits/pseuds/FactorialRabbits
Summary: The story of how humanity awoke, how Mairon charmed them for his Lord, and how a handful of them broke free of his yoke.





	For The Sake Of The Children

**Author's Note:**

> For B2MEM, prompts 'a distant ancestor', 'the unbegotten', 'birth', 'suicide' and 'drowning'. 
> 
> Content warnings: suicide, forced marriage, implied rape, major character death, minor character death, cults, human sacrifice, pregnancy complications, death by childbirth, child loss, murder

By the time Bëor is born, let alone when he crossed the mountains, much of the early history of men had been forgotten. Whilst they maintained knowledge of the general structures and key moments - awakening at Hildórien, Morgoth’s corrupting influence, the fleeing of some repentant peoples - the nuance was lost and the elves, being elves, pieced together their own narrative. 

This is not a story of elven creation, though it might also not be a truthful one; as was said, the records are lost.

It is also not a happy story, but then few things of those days are. 

This is the story of Eleventh, one of the unbegotten of men. 

* * *

When the sun first rose, Eleventh awoke beside a river. It was not an especially important river, but it was one nonetheless. For days he lived from it, drinking it's water and eating fruits from the nearby bushes, lonely without understanding what lonely actually was. 

He had been alive about a week when the others found him. Ten others, hence his name. 

When they moved on again the next morning, he went with them. 

Of the ten, five had awoken in the same place, one after the other. It had been Third’s idea to search out more people. So they had done so, driven by some instinct. 

Soon enough, five became more. When the group reached twenty nine people, the urge to find more lessened and they took it to mean their number was now complete. 

Little did they know that they should have been thirty five. 

* * *

It is both not very long and far too long before a servant of a god comes to them. He called himself Mairon servant of Melkor, bought them weapons to hunt and explanations of the world and a  _ purp _ ose. 

Mairon says to them that his Lord, Melkor, is the true, most powerful lord of creation, but his throne has been usurped by lesser beings who live far in the west. That these false gods will destroy them, and their homes. False gods that took the elder race under their wing, only to exile them, turning their faces away even as the elder race still fought their war. 

Mairon bows before them, and begs their aid in this age long war.

The Twenty Nine do not yet know what war is, have no concept of so many things. But Mairon is charming and kind and offered them such treasures as the knowledge of healing herbs, and these  _ Valar  _ sound so very terrible - exiling their own people like that - that they are charmed and agree.

Mairon thanks them and thanks them and returns to his Lord. They are left with writing and reading and the knowledge of the  _ proper _ ways of doing things.

They are also left with names.

None of them use those names, too used to the way they referred to one another, but they save them foot the children Mairon said would someday happen. 

* * *

It is many years before Mairon returns. In that time Eleventh grows taller, and a beard, and comes to think of Eighth as very, very lovely. 

Luckily for him, Eighth thinks he has grown into something rather fine, too.

They are not the first to marry - Mairon in his lessons wed First and Second in demonstration - but they do it anyway. A ceremony blessed by their god, Melkor, binding them together as one. 

The years continue to pass. Eleventh sires five wonderful daughters, each a joy in a very different way. 

Their sixth child would have been a son, had he not died and festered in the womb. 

Eighth dies shortly after, the tiny corpse inside her making her sick in ways they knew not how to cure, and that is how mortality first learns grief. 

* * *

Eleventh never takes another wife, though the fact when First died Second took Twentieth as his, despite her already being married, says he could. 

Mairon had said it too - the higher numbers are more important, so they can take from the lower of them.

That act causes a friction that there had never been before;  Twentieth did not want to change hands, but she was forced to. Some say it is Second’s right to take her, others say she has the right to chose herself, and fighting breaks out amongst them.

Four of the unbegotten and nine of their children die in the following fight. Eleventh does not, and neither do his daughters; they make themselves scarce and useful until everything dies down. 

Second and his supporters clearly win, but things never return to normality.

* * *

By the time Mairon returns, Eleventh’ daughters are all wed and with children of their own. 

His arrival coincides with Twelfth dying for no apparent reason, not long after his hair turned grey, his eyes speed seeing and his body frail. The mortals think it is some new illness; Mairon shakes his head and sighs, explaining to them old age and mortality and how the  _ Valar  _ took the immortality of the mortals away, saving it only for their own. 

This time Mairon stays for years, helping them through the grief and anguish of old age. 

Soon enough even Eleventh children's children have children of their own, and he is the only one of the unbegotten left. 

The longer he stays, the more wrong Mairon feels. But the young ones -  _ not so young ones anymore but still so young to him  _ \- love Mairon, just as he once did. 

So he says nothing. 

By the time Mairon introduces the concept of human sacrifice - literally giving your life in s show off faithfulness to Melkor - nobody even thinks to question it. 

* * *

At least, nobody thinks to question it until Eleventh is more deaf than not, more blind than not, grey haired and ancient and his own memory dimmed.

It is one of his grandsons who is chosen to be sacrificed, and he is the first to ever be unwilling to die for their god; his wife is pregnant with their first child, you see, and he begs to be allowed to see his child be born. 

Eleventh does his best to plead the case - there is something inherently, instinctually wrong about an unwilling sacrifice - but it seems Mairon’s word is now a god unto itself. He does not even pretend to pray to his Lord for guidance any more.

The sacrifice is scheduled for dawn. 

* * *

At around midnight that night, Eleventh gathers his daughters and their husbands and their children and their children's children and so forth - from his firstborn to a baby only days old. They all agree there is something wrong, and that they do not want to die.

Eleventh begs them to flee. They know not where to go, but the edge of the world is one way, so west it must be. A couple of them also suggest others they know to be likewise inclined; siblings and friends and such like. Others are suggested as people who must not find out, at all costs.

Eleventh’s youngest daughter begs him to come with them. 

He cannot. He is old and withered and would only slow them down. 

Some of his elder descendants offer to stay with him, and to provide a distraction to buy the others the time to get away. He refuses to let his littlest daughter be among them, even in her own old age.

Everyone knows those that stay will die, because now Mairon has slipped his kindly demur the cracks are easier to see, but the airmen is won by necessity. 

In the night, two groups slip away. One group (comprising most of Twentieth’s line, the part of Eleventh’s not staying behind, and a smattering of others) head west, the other part of Eleventh’s kin, and the other’s willing to die, north - back towards the river where he first awoke. 

It's not really intentional - they merely picked a different direction to go - but it feels right to do so. To end things where they began. Circles. He had always been fond of circles.

As they had hoped - as some had even prayed to the  _ Valar  _  out of spite(Eleventh was not sure what he thought about that, for surely they were evil too, but asking for help from the enemies of your enemy seemed to make enough sense to permit it) - it is the northwards group that is chased. 

By the time Eleventh reaches the river it is somehow a week later, and all of his group but for he are dead. How that happened he is not sure, but he suspects that he is being toyed with. The last of the first, and all that.

Once at the river, Eleventh knows he will soon die.

So his sits at the spot he was sat when the others first found him, in a form he now recognises was that of a child, and waits for the end to come. 

Because one way or another, it will. 

* * *

Mairon himself is the one who comes to kill Eleventh.

Eleventh, as he sat, had consisted his options. He knows he does not want to die by Mairon’s hand, and that he is helpless to defend himself. He suspects that he doesn't want whatever afterlife Melkor has planned for him, either. 

So for a long time on the bank, he thought of ways to avoid it.

Only one ever came to mind.

And so when Mairon approaches, rather than listen to a single one of the pretty words, he throws himself into the river, lets himself be dragged under and quickly downstream. 

He knows it will kill him. And he also knows it will take away Mairon’s prize.

He can only imagine the look on Mairon’s face at all this, and it makes him give a dry laugh. 

Except his head is underwater; his lungs fill with it as he laughs, and he dies choking on bitter, bitter laughter.

* * *

In death, Eleventh is surprised by the embrace and the bitter tears of the lady in black who guides him beyond the walls of the world.

Because get tears and her pity are so very familiar, and she is obviously of the Valar, and everything he was told the Valar did not have. 

He begs for his people from her, and all she can offer is that she is so very sorry, and that those who turn from Melkor will be granted protection.

It is not enough, but he is dead, and there is nothing else he can do.


End file.
